For When The Light Can't Guide You
by kusegoto
Summary: Shinjiro always knew; call it a trade secret. Headcanon piece on Shinjiro and Strega. Shinjiro uses they/them pronouns. Light Shinjiro/Akihiko.


For all the time Shinjiro knew them, they were certain in two things.

* * *

One, that Strega functions as a codependent unit — often, it seems Takaya is the only one who fronts for three, the one who breathes for all three and speaks for all three, the one who can mimic the way humans are meant to communicate, the one who can fake it well enough, but it is still clear enough to Shinjiro they all rely upon what they share. Shinjiro has never had a family, never connected the right way, from the orphanage to adopted arms, but they know you are not obligated to call the people who you live with your family. Still — they make it work.

Two, that they, and Strega, are unable to properly remember when they actually met.

They believe they met Takaya first. The one who speaks, who functions, who can walk around a corner without a sound but can't keep his mouth shut when there's a lie to weave, the one who probably found them at the peak of an Hour, and wrung the truth of their Persona out of them. He found enough inside the crushing void interesting enough to talk to them again once the sun came up.

When they cut the last splintered ties between their life and the purpose they had been given, they left in the night and took everything they had with them. October was unforgiving and the winds were waiting for November, leaving them cold and hungry in December. It was after a winter night well into the spring that they met the others.

Shinjiro goes on walks with them. The four sit at the waterfront when the sky turns green and the moon hangs like a tooth from a swollen gum, and Chidori looks at Shinjiro, and says, we wait for it to come closer.

It's the first time they hear the word Nyx. Spoken by Takaya, because when Shinjiro asked what she meant, his voice crawled over Shinjiro's shoulder. It's the first time, and they ask to hear more.

Perhaps Takaya thought that was what got them. Perhaps he thought he had a third one, after just a couple of weeks of exchanging dried out pleasantries. Perhaps Shinjiro listened too hard, too long, because when they heard She was to bring the end, they looked back to the moon, and wondered how bad it could really be.

* * *

Shinjiro does remember when they took their first suppressant. It was not Takaya who administered and spoke, but Jin. Shinjiro recalls it being the first time they heard him say anything that didn't start with 'Takaya'.

They had never been certain if Castor could be seen during the fits. They always felt his hands at their neck, spade sized and pushing down, fingers shifting and drumming against their body — then he reacts to a word, a thought, or feels the muscle beneath his heavy hands fight to pull away, and tightens his grip, choking them. When it happens this time, hiding in an alley with Jin, Shinjiro felt the air cut off, clawing at the hands that find them, raking their nails down their own throat.

The light of the yellow moon as melting gold, the buildings as drab grey. Jin as blue and lime green, and then there's that same blue and lime green dropping the silver it always carries, and Shinjiro sees a flash of orange before the light that makes Jin shoves a hand up against their mouth, two fingers and another hand wrenching their jaw open. They swallow, and they can't breathe afterwards.

But it clears.

"What the fuck did you do?" they spit, and they're still sixteen, and theynever learned how old Jin was but they thinks he is too, and while they both rot against the wall they're reminded of how young they are.

"They're called suppressants." None-too-compassionate, always cold, like Moros found the way to his throat and took his voice. "They keep your Persona from killing you. You weren't taking any."

A statement, the remnants of what could be a question hanging.

The following week, Jin is handing them their own bottle. The prescription is for doxepin, but pulling off the cap tells a much different story.

"The first hit is always free," Jin sneers, but it's the tone he uses when he's talking to someone he can remember the name of. Not friendly; just familiar.

He tells them the dosage times, then how much they'll expect each week, and then they're in mutual silence once more.

* * *

It takes a long time to see their Personas. Chidori reveals hers to Shinjiro first, when the four of them walk the streets, counting the rocks that roll under their feet. Medea is a figure of fire, and she watches the horizon with a vulture's gaze.

Moros comes more violently, pulled from Jin when the Shadows crawled before them – acolytes of Nyx they are, the creatures of the Dark Hour cannot discern prophets from prey.

( Addendum, for the footnote no one will read in their obituary, forgotten and left behind: Takaya's first mistake was pretending Shinjiro was one of them. )

The mechanical arm spins too fervently to fix your eyes on, and it's one of the few times Jin keeps himself together, push-pinned and wrapped, engrained sickness not spilling out of his torn body — and it's all to kill.

Takaya's is —

Something that reminds Castor of home, among thirty thousand stars and speaking a language like radio static, two souls brought together between two corpses. He watches a corpse hang, back splintered and old bones sprouting to bone wings, all brought without an evoker. Castor bristles. Takaya throws his arms wide like he's already accepted what the end looks like.

* * *

They never talk about it, not when there are weeks between time spent with them, not when there's just Shinjiro and one or two, not all three. They never talk about it, not even when they are talking about the end, when Takaya talks and Shinjiro listens, quiet and with their gaze ahead. They never talk about it because Shinjiro wouldn't know how to explain to Akihiko if they signed their peace and admitted they were running with a different crowd.

They never talk about it, because if they talked about it, it would be about what the four of them are doing, why Shinjiro doesn't admit they're working with them, when they ask about the boy he's sometimes with and Shinjiro mentions he's just a friend, and if Shinjiro told his friend that he had other friends —

Takaya would click his tongue and realize they won't commit, for all of their bullshitting and how Shinjiro bargains for more time, they just won't let go of the last threads keeping them held up.

So they don't talk about it.

August approaches, and Shinjiro turns eighteen. They don't tell Takaya, and they don't tell Akihiko.

* * *

In that time, between Akihiko's manhunt for him to drag him back to the dorm, Shinjiro learns more about them.

Chidori can sing, and she sings for Shinjiro, when Medea's hands move from her hair and let her breathe.

She can draw, too. They have never seen Takaya during the day, and Jin shows up like he knows where Shinjiro is to deliver medication more often than to talk. But Shinjiro's sat with Chidori at the station, waterfront and main city, all while watching her sketch. She says it calms her.

Jin touches no one and no one touches him — but Shinjiro cuts his hair, patient when he flinches and ignores him when he complains. He doesn't thank them, and Shinjiro doesn't need it. The electrical razor they lifted from a department store is then switched off, unplugged, and put away like it was never brought out. Jin reaches up and touches the back of his head, feeling the cut hair and scarred skin – and says it's much better, as if he realized what had happened and Shinjiro wasn't there.

They have sat in their shit apartment on many days but slept in it for less, never wanting to stay in the same place for long. Takaya asks if it's because their friend might find them. Silence is his answer. He doesn't laugh over it — something Shinjiro has also learned — but he breathes sharply, like the air cuts itself on his teeth, and he calls it "disappointing."

* * *

Akihiko finds Shinjiro eventually.

He finds them festering and with eyes so heavy they're bloodshot, wrapped in a coat that barely keeps warm. The first question is if they have a place to stay. The second is how they're planning on keeping their grades up if they never go to school. The third question is interrupted with Shinjiro's own, asking why Akihiko keeps trying.

They never talk about it, but theirs is something else — the problem with Akihiko sits in Shinjiro's chest like a sore, kept close like remorse and nostalgia. The _it _they have with Strega sits is at the base of their neck, ugly and awful and rattles like the refilled prescription bottle in his left pocket, pressure that rolls his head back and makes him stare at the sky, looking for the outline of the moon against blue.

Akihiko is the type to interrogate until he gets answers, never stepping back even when the other wants to be left alone – and he doesn't ask about Strega. So it means he doesn't know. Shinjiro feels relief, and it's so foreign, that they're unsure if they're dreaming.

It's a new school year, Akihiko tells them, like they don't know. There will be two new kids in the dorm, and both hold potential. Akihiko says that it'll be interesting to see someone besides Shinjiro and Mitsuru, and Shinjiro's image almost cracks, almost gives away, like the back two legs of a chair, and nearly laughs.

Akihiko asks what's so funny. Shinjiro nearly gives it away, that he hasn't met their new friends, and tells him nothing.

* * *

There's three of them, not two, which Shinjiro finds out a while later.

Chidori asks them why they were at the hospital not too long after, and Shinjiro takes to asking Chidori if she spies on them on Takaya's orders, or if she does it on her own volition. She shrugs her narrow shoulders. "It depends on what we have to do that day."

They shake their head and offer her the packaged sandwich Akihiko insisted on pushing into their hand from the hospital cafeteria. She takes it without a word, and eats it just as quietly.

* * *

It took a very long time to win Shinjiro over. And when Akihiko did —

Well. They stopped talking to Takaya, first. Jin wasn't long after. Those two always suspected Shinjiro got along better with Chidori, and with shit getting worse, it'd make sense. But when they lost Chidori to one of the louts Shinjiro was playing pretend with, it got a lot more personal.

Shinjiro wondered if it had to be anything official. If they had to pick a fight with the remaining two, standing over Chidori in the hospital, and pretend they only just picked a side now and hadn't once Akihiko caught up to them. But it happened over time, just like what it was when they would listen to Takaya's sermons and started shoplift what they all needed with Jin. Over time by staying in the dorms at night and telling Arisato different routes to avoid the two ghosts when they'd head to the school. It almost felt natural.

But they had a feeling, too.

Anniversaries were always Shinjiro's thing.

* * *

Takaya liked his gun. He stole it and he was proud of it. He showed Shinjiro how it worked and explained he had a partial attachment to what it meant, how the evokers always worked, what it was meant to symbolize.

He showed it to them when they were sitting too close to the edge of the river. Takaya got them into smoking, so they were sharing the same roll. Shinjiro said he was full of spiritual shit, and Takaya said, maybe so. He let them hold it and aim it down the cold water, tracing the shapes in the water. They've seen swimming Shadows, but they didn't last. Maybe if they took a shot, they'd bring something up, lost in the dark water. Float down the river into the sea, found only when the body catches on a boat's hull.

Takaya looks at the water, far below. "If you were thinking of jumping, I would like my revolver back."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Shinjiro replied, handing it back without looking at him. "There's too much shit left to do for that."

* * *

Which is all to say: Shinjiro knew how Takaya was holding the damn thing, and how he enjoyed pulling the trigger, and how he knew there was nothing left to mourn between them.

It didn't feel like betrayal. The betrayal was the lying, if you think about it. Not like Takaya really hid anything from Shinjiro, even if he didn't explain everything thoroughly, clearly, concisely. Meandering through his sermons like you'd forget the point and just admire how slow he could talk and how quick you were to care about his cause. Maybe, instead of taking out an obstacle, this was just revenge for ghosting him. If it didn't hurt to breathe, they'd have a good laugh about it.

Ken struggles to apologize. Akihiko struggles to hold Shinjiro's hand. There's a lot going through their head, a lot of blood pouring out of them, a lot of last regrets creeping up and choking what little breath they can catch. Everything is sharp, like a gunshot - which makes them laugh, soft and out of breath, leaning into Akihiko's grip, like it's the funniest thing that's left in the world.

They say their piece. They knew they could only apologize like this; to Amada, and to the other three. Maybe only Chidori's going to understand what it all means. They can give her a better apology in Hell.

The sky is no longer green. Death catches up like a falling building does the ground.


End file.
